36 Replies to “More Please”

  1. I live in NW Montana. Canadians from AB and BC have been coming here for years for Cat Scans, MRI’s, other diagnostics, surgeries and paid cash rather than waiting months or even years for their free health care in Canada.

    I have had 5 surgeries in the past 2 years. Waiting time average – 4 weeks. I need a knee replacement – last week the Doctor said, give me 5 weeks notice. Pretty standard. Of course this is Red State Montana, not Chicago, LA or NYC where I would probably get shot or mugged on the way to the hospital.

    1. NYC is pretty safe you should really venture beyond your hamlet. Stop watching cable news. LA is also pretty safe just otherwise a hellhole.

    2. I’ll doubt you’ll get mugged.
      Besides, you probably have a shall issue CCW and the hospital is happy to store for you during your stay.
      I can only dream of such a life with choices.

    3. JG3, Would you consider adopting a semi regular poster from SDA?

      As it’s Montana, would you also perhaps have room for an ex-pat SDA community on your patch of land?

    4. Here in BC Canada I waited 2 years for my knee replacement, and 18 months for cataract surgery. I understand is an even longer wait now.

  2. i live in manitoba. currently on a one year wait list for an appointment to see an eye doctor for cataracts. after the visit another wait for surgery. Health care in this province is a joke.

    old guy in manitoba

    1. Two of my 5 surgeries I mentioned above were for cataracts. 3/4 week wait time for each eye last year. Final 1 year eye exam this coming Friday. All free by the way as I am over 65 and have supplemental insurance so I am good if I stay under a total of $2 million and I am nowhere near that.
      Free Health Care = Rationing. We know that instinctively and logically.

    2. When Brian PallHitler was Premier, I was diagnosed as on the edge of being legally blind with cataracts. Was told I had to wait a year for a “referral” and if I was deemed a successful candidate, I would not wait more than three years for eye surgery. That’s if my eye sight did not get so bad that the damage was irreversible.
      Went to Southern Texas (Harlingen) for the procedure and they apologized profusely for the two week wait to have it done. I tried to recoup some of the $$$, but was told by MB Health that cataract surgery was “elective surgery” and all at my expense. Still money well spent. God Bless America.

      1. Unreal. My husband just had a cornea transplant. A few week wait. (There’s a bank of donor corneas.) He’s had other surgeries, also no long wait. We both had cataract surgeries done some years ago, without waits. I was in my late 50s. I could have waited till it got bad but decided to get it done. I paid extra for lenses that work with your eye muscles somewhat as your natural lenses do. So I don’t need reading glasses.

        We’re now in the Midwest (were in NY). We have Medicare Advantage insurance. No premiums, but an annual deductable for drugs, and copays for certain procedures and specialists. But you’re locked into network doctors. And I didn’t like mine, and the regimentation. So I’ll get different Medicare insurance next year.

        But I’ve signed up with a “direct primary care doctor” (DPC) for just over $100/month. For that you can see him whenever you need to, can email him, phone him — him directly. And he’s very open-minded re: tratments. Love the guy. The DPC model is becoming popular, and is used by most of the docs in America’s Frontline Doctors, who bucked the Covid treatment BS.

    1. Took them long enough. The average wait time for hip replacement from first referral to the surgeon to getting the surgery done is four years. My neighbour just went through this and is recovering at home now without agony. She has been living disabled in agony literally for years. Manitoba is a total absolute complete disgrace on multiple fronts. My wife is waiting for results on a blood test from her allergist. She was referred a year ago. It took seven months to get in to see the allergist and get a bunch of blood tests ordered. She had the blood work in May. She had to do it twice because of the lab losing her blood. She has to wait from May to September to speak to the allergist again about the results of the May test. I am on a wait list for an echocardiogram. Two years.

  4. I’m surprised they signed one with an ontario clinic, as it will probably run afoul of the Canada Health Act…

    I also wonder why they couldn’t pick somewhere sunnier

  5. I had a conversation with a friend just yesterday whose daughter is a nurse in an Ontario hospital. Her daughter, on her day off, was called by her hospital, and offered overtime at double the going rate if she would come to work because (wait for it), one ward was short 7 nurses for a single shift. One of her daughter’s associates is moving to Florida to work as a nurse because they offered her twice her current pay rate at par in US dollars if she would sign (so double her current pay plus the exchange bonus). And 6 of her daughter’s associates have taken similar deals in the last 6 months.

    And the Ford administration is still allowing vaccine mandates to exist in private corporations and for public health workers and talking about following Saskatchewan back into mask mandates in late October, early November when they can’t even staff hospitals to necessary levels. The Canadian Health Care system is dying a well deserved death – it needs to be euthanized and replaced.

    1. ” The Canadian Health Care system is dying a well deserved death – it needs to be euthanized and replaced. ”

      Send in MAID , they’ll get the job done on time and under budget , that’s a guarantee.

    2. Manitoba still has its stupid mask mandate. There is a security guard at the entrance to every hospital and you must don the official hospital approved mask before entry. It’s nuts.

      1. It’s not that crazy for hospitals. If there’s anyplace that I’d accept permanent masking, it’s hospitals. Lowers the transmission of everything.

        1. That’s BS. The masks commonly worn stop very little, and certainly not aerosolized viruses.

          1. You’ll love this (U.S. story). I had a Dr. appointment on Monday of this week. The building is a mini-hospital in one wing and medical practices. The hospital chain that owns the place requires masks on all the employees and there’s a sign on the door: “Masks Required”. It’s strictly the hospital chain’s policy and they hold the employees’ licenses and certifications over their head.

            I showed up, having walked through the place with no mask and about halfway through the short-ish paperwork – my first visit to this practice – the person taking the info noticed I was maskless and said they require masks then held one out for me.
            I said, “No thanks. I have my own,” and put it on. Fine by her.

            My own mask.

            At home, I had taken one of those blue paper/plastic earloop cheapie masks, just like the one I was offered. I folded it twice to make it form four sections. I sandwiched it between two boards and clamped the boards tightly. I selected a 3/8″ (~1 cm) drill bit and loaded it up in my drill, then proceeded to drill about 10 holes through the boards and the mask between them. The boards keep the bit from tearing the mask and you get clean holes.

            I removed the mask from the boards and there was this beautiful series of holes held together by bits of mask. That’s the mask I put on.

            No one blinked an eye or said a word about my mask, including the doctor I was seeing. She is a very sharp doc and I like her. She has skilz. Never even once mentioned my mask.

            So, the mask B.S. you mentioned is recognized by just about all of the medical staff I have encountered, but they need to keep their jobs and collect a paycheck to continue eating. I can only imagine what went through their minds, but I’m betting a touch of approval and a smidge of envy was in there somewhere.

            Not a word though, from anyone.

  6. Between this and the Ontario OHIP payments to private clinics, we are well into ‘beginning of the end’ phase. The fact that no one of import is mounting a fightback makes clear that the prohibition on private medicine is going the way of marijuana prohibition.

    The absolute KEY in the next phase is to keep private sector medicine free market ie no price controls, no restrictions at all. This is a vastly higher priority than cutting public health care spending and if more of the latter is required to ‘politically shield’ the former, so be it.

    1. We could always do healthcare like Switzerland, or Germany, or the Netherlands, or Norway, or any number of advanced Western democracies.
      At the same, or less cost than Canada, with demonstrably better and faster outcomes.

      Or we can cry and scream “American-style, American-style!”, do nothing, and sink deeper into the morass.

  7. Well done Manitoba. The slow drip of privatization in my opinion.
    For an encore tell the feds to build their creepy Ministry of Climate Change facility somewhere else.
    Firearms armoury…interrogation rooms…jail cells…labs…armed enforcement officers. What fresh hell are they planning for Canadians now?

    1. burton, considering their takeover of healthcare was about power and control, not healthcare, I would start believing they’ll be building one in every province, because they will need a base in each province to interrogate and process undesirables like us. We are just not behaving as they would want, and they will now be enforcing it…..um, more forcefully!

  8. Not an ounce of shame or self-awareness that their institution too big to fail has failed.

    Wow.

  9. Surprised no one has set up a private medical clinic on treaty land, which would thereby be exempt from the Canada Health Act and they can do almost whatever they want and scream “colonialism” and “racism” if the Feds try to stop it.

  10. We’ve always had the evil american system as a backstop. Alberta has used NICU in Montana for years only becuase dying babies make bad headlines.

    Old people hobbled with joint issues isn’t headline grabbing. If I ran a hospital somewhere in the states where there are direct flights from major Canadian cities I’d be writing up sales pitches to take 50 hip/knees a week. Take the youngest/healthiest from the list to reduce complications. Hell a hospital in northern Wa State could do bus loads a day.

      1. Sanford Health is native to the Dakotas. It’s THE big health/hospital/clinic network in the western part of the Midwest. In Sioux Falls (SD) the biggest specialty is cardiology. In ND (Fargo, Bismarck) it’s orthopedic specialties.

  11. But of course you will need to be vaccinated and use the arrive can app to go to the states. More discrimination and segregation. Good job MB

  12. The public unions run healthcare in Canada. Rather than admit the system has completely failed, they now spend large sums in addition to current expenditures to send people outside the province or nation for care.

    Public healthcare shall always be a failure. When the price is nil to the direct user, there shall be far elevated demand to what would suffice with market prices. In terms of supply, government bureaucrats are great at wasting precious resources, and always will be.

    Too much demand amid greatly diminished supply means a perpetual crisis.

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